Captain Sir John Franklin – known as The Man Who Ate His Boots after trying to beat starvation by swallowing leather shoes on a previous mission – led the expedition to chart the waters of the Northwest Passage and study its wildlife.

Haunting: Search teams find sailors' skeletons (Image: Getty)

The ships were packed with enough food for three years and Sir John’s orders were to criss-cross the last unnavigated section.

Two whaling vessels, the Enterprise and Prince of Wales, were the last Europeans to see the ships in August 1845.

Except for occasional encounters with the Inuit, the crews would never be seen alive again.

Evidence suggests the men had to abandon their ships in brutal conditions after they got trapped in ice.

Experts think some of them lost their minds while others resorted to ­cannibalism . Inuit said they found 30 bodies with severed limbs and bones stripped of flesh.

Some bones were excavated on King William Island in the 1990s, which also showed signs of cannibalism.

The remains were reburied after they had ben studied.

Archeologist Robert Park, of the University of Waterloo, is trying to piece together what happened.

He said: “The place where the bones are, something really horrible happened. At least 11 British sailors died there and there’s good evidence some of the last ones did resort to cannibalism.

“They did something that would have been repugnant to them, that they had to do in order to survive, and it still didn’t save their lives.

"That is so sad.”

Under pressure from Sir John’s wife Lady Jane Franklin, a hunt was launched in 1848 and, prompted by a reward from the Admiralty, a number of expeditions set off.

But in 1859, Lt William Hobson, of steam yacht Fox, which was chartered by Lady Jane, found a sombre message left in a cairn at Victory Point on King William Island.

Lost: An illustration of the ships Erebus and Terror (Image: Getty)

It said the ships had been trapped in ice for a year and a half and Sir John died in June 1847.

It said his crews abandoned their ships in April 1848 after they had been caught for almost two years in the ice pack in the Victoria Strait near the island.

Before they fled, the 105 survivors recorded their plan to proceed on foot towards Back River. None survived.

Prof Park said: “All sorts of expeditions, British and American, went looking for the lost expedition because it was totally mysterious that it had disappeared.

“What happened is complicated, but there are Inuit accounts.

"The ships certainly drifted. One of them appears to have been crushed by the ice a little bit south of where they were abandoned.

"Another one appears to have drifted a lot farther south.”

Erebus and Terror were converted wooden bomb vessels that had seen prior service in polar exploration and had modern systems to work in the ice.

The sailors also had canned food – a new technology – although it is believed lead poisoning from the containers could have contributed to their deaths.

Prof Park said: “They used lead solder to seal the cans and a lot of it came into contact with the food.

"A plausible hypothesis is the effects of poisoning added to the other kinds of hardships.”

Many searches have been carried out but it is hoped the new effort could at last solve the mystery.